iPhone 5 rumored to arrive in China by late 2012 or early 2013

You might not know it from a quick glance at Apple's plummeting share price, but things at Apple are A-OK. The company is building iPhone 5s as fast as consumers are snatching them up, and the recent release of the iPad Mini and 4th gen iPad set an all-time weekend tablet sales record with over 3 million units sold. Without a doubt, the holiday quarter is poised to be a blow out earnings bonanza for Apple. And no doubt adding to Apple's booming bottom line is the impending release of the iPhone 5 in China.

You might not know it from a quick glance at Apple's plummeting share price, but things at Apple are A-OK. The company is building iPhone 5s as fast as consumers are snatching them up, and the recent release of the iPad Mini and 4th gen iPad set an all-time weekend tablet sales record with over 3 million units sold.

Without a doubt, the holiday quarter is poised to be a blow out earnings bonanza for Apple. And no doubt adding to Apple's booming bottom line is the impending release of the iPhone 5 in China.

No, the iPhone 5 isn't coming to China Mobile just yet, but according to the Wall Street Journal it will launch on China Telecom either sometime in late November or in early December.

The report notes that the only remaining roadblock for China Telecom, and China Unicom for that matter, to carry the device is government approval.

Government officials haven't offered guidance on when the iPhone 5 might win final approval. But China Telecom Chairman Wang Xiaochu said Friday in a brief interview on the sidelines of the Communist Party's 18th Party Congress in Beijing that the phone should be by early December if not sooner.

China, of course, is an instrumental cog in Apple's ongoing efforts to increase growth. Thus far, growth in China has outpaced that in every other country Apple does business in, and as Tim Cook has repeatedly said before, they've only begin to scratch the surface of the potential there.

While carriers like China Telecom and China Unicom are great avenues for iPhone sales, the real ace in the hole for Apple is China Mobile, the largest cell carrier on the planet with over 655 million subscribers. For years, rumors of the iPhone landing on China Mobile have persisted, with the obvious roadblock being China Mobile's proprietary network technology that would require Apple to tweak its iPhone hardware to run on it.

Also of note is that even if the iPhone 5 comes to China before 2013, users there won't be able to take advantage of 4G network speeds as 4G licenses along with a robust 4G network aren't expected to make an appearance until late 2013 at the earliest.

All told, the iPhone 5 is without a doubt Apple's fastest iPhone rollout to date. By the end of 2012, Apple plans to have the iPhone available in at least 100 countries.

Yoni Heisler is a technology writer and Mac nerd who's been using Apple products for well over 21 years. He actively covers a wide variety of Apple topics, from legal news and rumors to current events and even Apple related comedy and history.